When I was building plastic models (1960s), I noticed that the acetone-based glue didn’t stick well to the ‘chrome’ plated surfaces. The recommendation from the hobby shop was to sand or scratch off the plating. I discovered that a regular pencil eraser could also take off the plating easily — I just ‘erased’ the plating!

Great post David! I feel like we’re in the same middle space with the Oru Kayak, and pre-planning for Kickstarter now. We’ve been looking at a number of options for the final assembly stage- the volumes are too small for most contract assemblers, but too large for us to do in-house. One option we’re excited about is setting up a small assembly operation in Willits, my hometown- it’s a rural town with chronic unemployment, and lots of vacant industrial space that used to serve the wood products industry. There are a lot of places like this in the US (even close to our high-tech and financial hub cities), and this gets back a bit to your “plumbers” post- how can we leverage the underused resources around us- in terms of people, space, and manufacturing equipment- to move forward with the more small-scale, decentralized, dare-I-say democratic model of design and manufacturing that the Maker movement espouses?

I disagree with your hypothesis. While its great to pretend that robots will fix our toilets using 3d printers in a hackerspace, that is just wrong. There is far too much existing infrastructure that relies on the current technology/implementation that will continue to need service and installation for years to coe.

Making a LED widget at a hackerspace is awesome, but making a proper joint in copper inside my dry wall is best left to people who spent more than 2 minutes in a hackerspace using a torch.

Don’t get me wrong I love tinkering and building but by saying you can learn to be a good plumber in a few weekends is foolish. Yes you can be mediocre, but thats not enough.

There is a big difference between having an idea how to fix something and actually knowing how to fix it.

In addition to being an online editor for MAKE Magazine, Michael Colombo works in fabrication, electronics, sound design, music production and performance (Yes. All that.) In the past he has also been a childrens’ educator and entertainer, and holds a Masters degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.